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the Garlic Gallery

Hello garlic lovers. While the 2008 crop is nice and cozy under a bed of straw, I wanted to tell you a little bit about my love affair with the stinking rose. I was going to say that next year's crop was snoozing under the mulch, but I discovered that it's actually pretty busy putting down roots.

We have never gotten all our cloves planted until mid-December. I don't think this is recommended; it's just that we don't seem to get it all in during October and November. If the mulch is not down before the hard freezes hit, the frost usually pushes up some of the cloves, and I am always amazed at the extent of the root development. That's how I know they're busy during the winter months.

I only got the last of the '07 crop cleaned in January when the picture above was taken, and I was surprised at how firm and sprout-free the bulbs were. In hopes of distributing these bulbs at the start of the '08 CSA season, I called Tom Begnal at Filaree Farm to get some tips on long term storage. He referred me to Dr. Gayle Volk at the University of Colorado. Her lab researches cryogenic storage of seeds. She recommended storage at 0 to minus 5 degrees Centigrade.

To answer an old question, yes, you can freeze garlic. But a chest type freezer is too cold and the bulbs will turn to mush when they thaw. She recommends using a refrigerator at its lowest setting, and although our Chinese Purple is sprouting in the kitchen garlic jar at home, the bulbs in the cold fridge are in arrested development and remain firm and sprout-free. I will update you in May when we hope to include the stored bulbs with the early shares of spring greens and radishes from the greenhouses.

Now, a little about the Asbury Village Farm varieties. In the fall of 2002, we bought seed stock from Filaree Farm. Tom recommended two Rocamboles, Killarney Red and Carpathian, as well as a Purple Stripe called Persian Star. These are hardneck garlics (sativuum ophioscorodon). They all grew well in our gravelly loam and Zone VI temperatures. In 2004 we ordered the Chinese Purple and Brown Tempest, and bought some Porcelain from Billie and Skip Fairman in Nazareth. The Purple really struggled to get through the mulch but did well the following year.

Reading about softneck garlics (sativuum sativuum) and their longkeeping properties, I asked Tom for a suggestion and we planted the Inchelium Red in 2005. It proved to be remarkably vigorous. Here are some observations about each of our seven garlics:

The Rocamboles

I have had a hard time distinguishing between the Killarney Red and the Carpathian. Sometimes I can see a little color difference in the stalks. Although the Killarney Red was really super-sized this year, they tend to produce very similar bulbs in size and color.

The Purple Stripes

The Persian Star, although not large in size, is consistently hardy and hot. The Brown Tempest is a Glazed Purple Stripe and in our soil produces a handsome, dusky brown, medium size bulb.

Porcelain

I call this one Fairman White since it had an undetermined provenance. It is the cleanest in appearance and consistently large. Porcelains only produce 4-6 cloves per bulb and this one is on the mild side.

Inchelium Red

These bright white Artichoke bulbs can get large. The three inch diameter specimen I entered in the Farmer's Fair won first place. Their stalks fall over just before harvest and make amply clear the term softneck.

Chinese Purple

This Artichoke sub-variety is my favorite. It needed coaxing to adapt to our growing conditions, but this year it performed very nicely with the most amazing purple splotching on the wrappers. The stalks are weak and produce few scapes (more about these later). I think of it as sort of a hermaphrodite, half hardneck and half softneck. In storage, these guys want to grow really early and seem to be the first to sprout.

I have learned how critical harvest timing is. Since the wrappers can rot very quickly, getting the bulbs out of the ground should be done sooner rather than later. As a result, the crop reveals a lot more color because when you clean the bulbs you aren't peeling away the outer wrappers where the color resides.

Curt Rowell: 02/29/08 (work in progress) Care to comment? curt@nrinet.com